Good Samaritan

Good Samaritan

The word I’d like to share with you today is Good Samaritan. It’s used today as a euphemism for a charitable or helpful person. It comes from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a story told in the New Testament. In the story, a man is beaten, stripped of his clothing, and left for dead on the side of the road. Two people pass by and avoid him, but a third person stops to help him. That person is known as the Good Samaritan, and that is where we get that term today.

Right at the end of our discussion of the cold weather, I mentioned that a group of about 70 homeless people in Chicago were using propane fuel tanks for heat, but after one of them exploded, the police confiscated the remaining tanks. That would have left those people without a source of heat on the second-coldest day in the city’s history. But a person in Chicago—we do not know his or her name—offered to pay for hotel rooms for those people, who were going to have to stay in a warming center overnight. That person, who did a good deed for strangers, is known as a Good Samaritan.

In fact, that’s exactly how you see it written in the news—and I would say usually, not always, you use this term when you don’t know the identity of the person helping you or if that person is a total stranger. I’ll give you a more personal example: I was the beneficiary of a Good Samaritan recently.

Here in the US, you need to keep a sticker on the license plate of your car proving that your car registration is current. I got my sticker in the mail and somehow managed to lose it. I put it in my back pocket and then forgot about it—when I remembered it, it was gone. I looked everywhere in my house, and I figured I had lost it forever. That’s when an envelope came in the mail from a furniture store here in Chicago. It was curious because I remembered going into the store, but I was sure that I had not given my address, so I was surprised to get something in the mail from them. I opened the envelope, and sure enough—it was my car registration. A note said that a customer found the sticker on the ground in the store. Luckily, it was in the original envelope, which had my address on it. The person who picked it up and gave it to the store employee, and the store employee who sent it to me—I consider both of them to be Good Samaritans. They did not have to do what they did, but I am extremely grateful to them.

You might remember Episode 53, when we talked about a man in Paris who climbed up the exterior of a tall apartment building to save a child who was dangling from a fourth-floor balcony. He’s another example of a Good Samaritan.

That’s all for today’s episode. Remember to join us every Monday and Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen. You know, a lot of you discover us on Spotify, but if you’re looking for another convenient way to listen, you might try to find us on Android or iOS by doing a search for podcasts. The podcast app should already be on your phone, so that’s another way you can listen.

Don’t forget MosaLingua at PlainEnglish.com/learn. And JR and I will see you later on this week for another exciting episode of Plain English.